Mix Interiors June 2016

Mix Interiors June 2016

Spotlight from Mix Interiors on the work of the product designer who reveals a few tricks of their invaluable trade.

DESIGNER PROFILE – MIRTO ANTONEL FOR ALEA

The Company / The most recent product we have worked on

Alea is a successful Italian company that has been projecting and manufacturing office furniture for more than 30 years. My collaboration with this brand has been lasting for 18 years now, and I think when a relation goes so well and it protracts for such a long time, it means that the communication channels people use to interact, are perfectly functioning and efficient, which is primary to achieve the targets.

I think that the basis for a successful product is the work founded on values like respect of other people’s professionalism and synergy between the members of the teamwork, because the result for one is the result for everybody.

The latest project I’ve been working at with the Alea’s team, is a new furniture and desks system collection. The name of the product is Ibis and we are now developing the catalog.

The name, as every single line creating a shape, is never random, it always reflects a meaning which always connects to other meanings.

“Less is more”, phrase of the genius Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, that used this principle as the basis for the new architecture. An architecture which was no longer looking at ostentation and complexity of the result as the goal to achieve, but provoking a new way to create, able to generate buildings and objects made of essential and flawless shapes designed to identify the function. Thanks to the most cutting edge technologies has been possible to realise very complex manufacturing with sustainable costs, using light and resistant structures and elegant shepes. This is Ibis.

Thing that gets on my nervs

Fast development drags into chaos that often translates in superficiality.

The biggest influence in my career

Human being does essentially three things: thinking, living emotions, acting. This explains why we are fascinated by objects, they unleash emotions. But industrial design goes beyond pure beauty, it also meaning, and to obtain it requires responsibility and skills, people, ideas and team work. The input for a new design can be provoked by client’s needs, structural issues, sometimes it develops from an apparently banal sketch. Either way the result has to cause an emotion.

This is my input.

The big question

What is relevant now compare to the past, is the opportunity to design with new tools and materials.

The materials used to make objects are not only functional, they now need space for narration so design becomes the medium to make it happen.

The second interesting tool is computer technology which allows people to design in one place and make the final object in the opposite part of the world.